


all that remains

by duets



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Gen, spanning from pre blight speculation until the end of da2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 20:09:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5599225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/duets/pseuds/duets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>carver, bethany and marian, and the many ways to be a hawke.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all that remains

__

  
  


They are born after Marian has just turned eight, Nessiara’s mother sweaty and with a tired smile coming to fetch her from the streets. She swats Marian’s muddy hug away with her apron, snorts and says  _ the bloody parts are over now, da’len, go see them-- _ and Marian runs and runs like home is in Denerim and not just downhill, yells at the other children to come and see her tiny siblings later.

Marian is eight, heart still full from her nameday and Father making it rain Fade lights on her, bright like fireworks and Mother’s amused laughter. They are her finest gift a few months late and she is sure no one else has known a better present, not even the Antivan pirate princesses in their boat palaces.

Marian is eight and the strangest thing she knows is the way her mother’s accent drags when she’s angry, the long looks she gets from the pale Northern children for her brown skin, their quiet suspicion of her inability to burn spindleweed red after too long in the sun. 

She will turn a boy’s hands to frost a few months later, furious with the way his lips curl to slur  _ maleficar  _ about Father like it’s true. The boy’s own father is a knight, he will say, works all the way down in the capital, taught him how to use a  _ sword  _ and he will come for Marian’s family in the night to lock away the evil from her home. Marian will say  _ you and what templars  _ too light and too easy, like the players of that invisible Game from Mother’s books. She has no mask to hide behind, however, and when the boy raises his fist she will meet his ugly snarl head on. His hand will never touch her.

  
They are born a few months after Marian has turned eight, will never know a life without running. But to her, hair stiff with mud and flushed happy from yelling a Nevarran curse she shouldn’t know when she sees how  _ big  _ they are--to Marian, who is already too tall to ride piggyback on Mother to the markets, who overhears worried conversations when she should be asleep, to Marian, who shakes a little while holding them both at once, who laughs at their tiny old man smiles--for Marian, who will turn a boy’s hands to frost and strike down a Qunari emperor--they will always be the most impossible and magical of all things. 

 

 

 


End file.
